M. Paturet takes the view that it was not so much as the mother, but as woman, and being the equal of man, that the Egyptians honoured their women. Perhaps the truth rather is that there was no separation between the woman and the mother. This is the view that I would take; to me it is the right and natural one. But be this as it may, Egyptian morality placed first the rights of the mother. No religious or moral superiority seems to have attached to the established wife. Even when there had been no betrothal, and no intention of marriage, law or custom recognises the claim of any mother of children to some kind of provision at their father's expense. "Nothing proves the high status of woman so clearly as this: her child was never illegitimate; illegitimacy was not recognised even in the case of a slave woman's child."[220] There is a curious deed of the Ptolemaic period by which a man cedes to a woman a number of slaves; and--in the same breath--recognises her as his lawful wife, and declares her free _not_ to consider him as her husband.[221] A byssus worker at the factory of Amon promises to the wife he is about to establish, one-third of all his acquisitions thenceforward: "my eldest son, thy eldest son, _among the children born to thee previously_ and those thou shalt bear to me in future shall be master of all I possess now or shall hereafter acquire." Even when such arrangements were not entered into voluntarily, public opinion seems always to have been in favour of the woman. A case is recorded where four villagers of the town of Arsinoee pledged themselves to the priest, scribe, and mayor that a fellow villager of theirs will become the friend of the woman who has been as his wife, and will love her as a woman ought to be loved.[222] Most significant of all is the well-known precept of Petah Hotep, which refers to the expected conduct of a man to a prostitute or outcast-- "If thou makest a woman ashamed, wanton of heart, whom her fellow townspeople know to be under two laws" (_i.e._ in an ambiguous position), "be kind to her for a season, send her not away, let her have food to eat. The wantonness of her heart appreciateth guidance." I know of nothing finer than this wide understanding of the ties of sex. It is an essential part of morality, as I understand it, that it accepts responsibility, not alone in the regular and permanent relationships between one man and one woman, but also in those that are temporary and are even considered base. Only in this way can the human passions be unified with love.